Nick Berkley
Nick Berkley is a Black queer trans man, abolitionist, organizer, and kincentric community care worker. Who lives, loves, and breathes/fights for the safety, joy, and liberation of all black folk. Especially for black womyn, trans, queer, neurodivergent and young folk. Nick has been organizing across many different aspects of liberation work for the past 15 years. Originally from the South with a strong distaste of cold weather. Milwaukee and Sun Seeker MKE are now his home. A beautiful chilly city full of black joy, resillience, creativity and folx who continuously find ways to care for each other and build toward a liberated new world. Sun Seeker MKE is his organizing home; a black trans abolitionist collective building infrastructures of community care, safety, and liberation without policing and incarceration. Their work lives of intersections of youth power, gender justice, mutual aid, transformative justice, crisis response, food sovereignty, community safety, and building alternatives to policing and incarceration. A sacred container where he's found beloved comrades to build, dream, rest, fight, and actively practice liberation alongside his people.
He believes our communities already hold pieces of the worlds we’re fighting for and it's our job to nurture those practices, connect them, and keep on building and experimenting. He also believes in the duality of the work, understanding the need to show up, fight, organize, and build. While also knowing when to rest and take care of ourselves. For him, black joy, pleasure, connection, and rest are a vital part of the work itself. there is always room for both the work and the joy that makes the work worth doing to his commitment to building communities where our people can truly thrive. Outside of organzing you can find Nick spending time with his friends & chosen family, visiting new places, cooking, outdoor adventures and or spending time with his friends and chosen family one of his eight animals he has!
In-Person | PM Session A
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
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Facilitated By: Nick Berkley, Kiyanna Baylock, & Andrea Ritchie
Audience: Open to Everyone
What does it take to build new worlds while transforming the conditions we live in now?
Our 90 minute experimental facilitation and container invites comrades and communities to explore Milwaukee Beyond Policing through a multi-issue, Black, radical community centered approach to community safety/deference, collective healing, and liberation. Grounded in the work of Black, Trans Organizers within Sun-Seeker MKE, we will explore how communities can build infrastructures of care and safety without the cops and address the interconnected conditions impacting our neighborhoods: from food access and crisis response to violence prevention, grief, and collective healing.
Using our hyperlocal, block by block framework, that activates and reinvest in radical political education and practical skills, participants will move through an interactive “Science Fair” featuring practical tools and approaches for community based safety and care. Fair stations include pod mapping and neighborhood relationship-building, Stop the Bleed, deescalation, harm reduction, and transformative/non-carceral justice practices. Participants will then enter a facilitated community grief space, learning the foundations of circle keeping and exploring how grief & care circles can support collective healing, accountability, and connection in their own communities.
We'll draw inspiration from Audre Lorde’s multi issue approach, recognizing that racial justice and liberation require us to build across interconnected struggles rather than addressing issues in isolation.Participants will leave with practical frameworks, skills, and questions they can bring back to their neighborhoods, pods, and communities as we reimagine and practice formations of safety and care beyond policing.